KEEPING IN TOUCH
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This week's Post Office strike has highlighted the importance of good communications. Two-way radio telephone is keeping the traffic office in touch with the driver's cabin.
by lain Sherriff, MITA "Calling grey one zero zero, grey one zero zero, come in please—over." "Grey one zero to Air Call—over." "Thank you grey one zero zero, I have a message from your office: Mr L. and Mr R. have been delayed but they will r.v. with you one hour later than arranged; is this Roger? Over." "Thank you Air Call. Message fully understood Grey one zero zero standing by." "Thank you grey one zero zero, Air Call standing by".
THAT is the text of a conversation between myself and a radio-telephone switchboard operator in Cardiff. It took place on October 19 when I was . motoring to the Road Haulage Association Conference in Torquay. Before leaving London I had advised my secretary how I could be contacted at various times during the day.
The message told me that two of my colleagues had been delayed for one hour—an hour which I would otherwise have spent anxiously awaiting their arrival. Instead I was able to make an unscheduled but useful call in Exeter. About six weeks later I travelled to Hull. During the entire journey on MI, M18, A l(M) and A63 I received messages from my office in London and was able to answer.
Because I have a radio-telephone in my car I can be contacted or can contact anyone who has access to a Post Office telephone. On another occasion when delayed in heavy traffic on my way to an important appointment—the meeting of the West of England and South Wales carriers in Bristol (CM December 18)—I was delayed in heavy traffic. Fortunately, I was able to contact those concerned and advise them of my plight, the meeting being delayed a sufficient time for me to arrive before it started. This is a facility which I could not have enjoyed without radio-telephone. Instead, I would have been placed in the embarrasssing position of having to present a rather weak apology.
Two-way radio-telephone is neither a businessman's toy nor merely equipment for the exclusive use of the executive in his car: Having studied the use of this equipment for four months and having spoken to operators who have been using it for many years, I consider it to be a very necessary tool of management, particulady transport management. In the transport industry employees spend most of their working day out of touch with their supervisors. Radiocontrol provides a very desirable link between the cab and the traffic office.
22 centres The equipment I use was installed and is serviced and operated by Air Call Ltd, of 176 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1. This company has 22 operating centres in Britain and its RT covers almost the entire country from the South Coast of England to approximately 30 miles north of the Forth/Clyde valley. The areas of Cuniberland, Westmorland, the Scottish borders and the Welsh Mountains are not covered at the moment.
Those using Air Call range from the owner-driver of a 30cwt Ford Transit to the gigantic ,E4m 3M company. It is used by hauliers, tyre distributors, service and maintenance engineers, security guard companies, doctors and company executives.
The simplest method of telephone answering service provided is for the caller to phone Air Call with a request for a message to be relayed to a "mobile"—a vehicle fitted with RT equipment. In this case Air Call will radio. the mobile and relay the message while the Post Office subscriber is still on the telephone.
It should be pointed out that calls can originate from either a landline, which is a PO telephone, or a mobile.
When Air Call's operator has both parties on the air she passes messages between them in a language which is understandable only to the person receiving the message. Conversations can be passed between two landlines, two mobiles, mobile and landline or vice versa.
Should the party being called not be immediately available, Air Call will hold the instructions and in time will make contact.
Within the next few weeks the company will be introducing a service which will include equipment to relay messages to drivers who are away from their vehicles, even though they may be indoors.
The Post Office also provides a "referred service" through Air Call. When a telephone is temporarily unmanned and the Post Office operator has been advised, she will inform the caller that calls have been referred temporarily to another number. This number is the local Air Call switchboard.
A sophistication of the referred service is a "tied" line arrangement. By this method if a subscriber's telephone rings, a light flashes on the Air Call board. If it flashes more than an agreed number of times, then the Air Call operator answers the call as if she were the subscriber. The message is passed to the party being called immediately they become available.
Lightweight operators Since carriers' licensing was abolished for vehicles not exceeding 30cwt unladen in October 1968 a number of new light-vehicle operators have appeared on the transport scene. Many of these new men are Air Call subscribers and are building their businesses on the service which Air Cap provides.
These operators are in many ways a new breed of transport men in that their "immediate delivery" offer generates urgent request traffic. My investigations show that a providing this service they are quoting ates far in excess of those quoted by stablished carriers and they are quoting uccessfully.
Light freight operators to whom I spoke tressed that they did not provide a cheap ervice. Their claim was that they provided n immediate service. As an example I was )ld that they could obtain up to £40 for .ne small parcel from London to lirmingham. The rate was dependent on the alue of the goods and the urgency of the elivery.
Some 18 months ago Mr M. Green of idcup, Kent, began operating a parcels elivery service—Speedy Deliveries •(Sidup). For the first 15 months he operated le service from his own home and at first is wife answered the telephone. When Mrs ;Teen had to leave the house the telephone rent unanswered, leading to dissatisfaction f a potential customer and consequently le loss of a job. Mr Green is a very lively oung man. He saw early on that with the Istallation of a radio-telephone he could xpand his business, be his own driver and arry his office within the cab of his vehicle. Mr Green's business has expanded and, e has come to the stage where his office ; now located at some distance from his ouse and he can no longer call on the :mporary assistance of his wife. Had he ot installed a radio-telephone in his early ays it would have been necessary now; the lternative would have been the engagement f some other person, the cost of which rould have been in excess of the Air Call !,rvice, according to Mr Green. He also oints out that when a company has only )ur vehicles and a member of the office :aff is sick or on holiday, then 25 per cent f the fleet must be withdrawn in order to tan the office telephone. This is not so with ,ir Call who man his telephone 24 hours a ay, seven days a week.
In these days when spare part shortages re commonplace—and I understand that is applies not only to the motor idustry—much of Mr Green's work ancerns collecting parts from the end of le production, line and rushing them to tanufacturing plants or stores. It is on this ind of work that he is building his putation.
'est collection In Southampton, Jefferies Light Freight ervices operate six vehicles, one of which is itted with radio-telephone. This ehicle is the company's collection service, nd it feeds traffic to the other five vehicles. 4r Alan Jefferies, the managing director, xplains that in these days when freight on he long haul is moving fast by air, .overcraft or overnight train, then the ollection service must also be fast and be eared to fit into the fast freight pattern.
This service began five years ago when dan Jefferies was using one Minivan on jr-freight deliveries. On October 131968 le Mini was replaced by a 30cwt van and le build-up of the fleet has continued since lat date. Mr Jefferies said: "We are uccessful because we can offer a service which is almost immediate". I understand that seldom does a consignment stand for more than an hour before collection. Most of the traffic is fed to hoverports, Heathrow and railheads.
In London, Trident Transport use the Air Call service in the same way as other operators use a traffic office. One person at Trident's Archway office passes instructions to Air Call who relay the instructions to the drivers. The Trident vehicles are fitted with multi-channel sets and all thaf the traffic controller needs to know is approximately which part of the country the vehicle is in. Trident also uses Air Call to pass early morning alarm calls to drivers each morning one hour before they commence duty. These alarm calls are passed on the Post Office landline to telephones in the drivers' homes. The Air Call operator passes details of the first job and subsequent jobs throughout the day.
According to Mr Paul Fluckiger, Trident's managing director, without the use of Air Call he would need to engage an additional three members of staff in his office at an estimated total outlay of £8000 a year.
This remote control type of operation, I suggested, could lend itself to pilferage. But according to Mr Fluckiger the company has not lost one packet in five years' trading.
One example of how the radio-telephone has built a reputation of speed and reliability for Trident was the movement of an important consignment from LIFT at Stratford in East London to Ellesmere Port near Liverpool. The request was received by Trident at 17.00 hours. By 17.15 hours a vehicle which had been working in East London was on its way to LIFT. After loading, it proceeded to Trident's office where the necessary arrangements were made with the drivers to ensure that there was no breach of the statutory hours. Within a few minutes the load left and 3 tons of components were delivered to an assembly line at Ellesmere Port at 00.32 hours.
Mr Fluckiger points out that without Air Call drivers could not have been contacted until they returned to the garage by which time it would have taken at least another hour to get back to LIFT in the London rush-hour traffic. In fact, this would have meant that the load could not have been collected until the next morning and consequently would not have arrived at Ellesmere Port until about 24 hours after the call had been received, instead of seven hours later.
Sense of urgency Two unseen factors which Mr Fluckiger highlights are that the RT equipment gives the driver a sense of urgency. In his experience, radio-controlled drivers tend to spend less time off the job than those without RT. In addition, he says that when a message is passed by an Air Call operator there is little likelihood of the driver becoming involved in an argument whereas disagreements frequently occur when instructions are passed on by a traffic clerk.
At this point in our discussion it occurred to me that in some respects the use of this system resembles that of a tachograph. Each time a man leaves his vehicle he signs off the air, and when doing so states where he is and for what purpose. On his return he signs on again; all his messages and movements are logged by Air Call's operators.
Mr Fluckiger makes no claim to be running a cheap service but like others using RT he charges what might be considered by some to be high rates. He claims, and it appears with every justification, that because he is able to offer an immediate service to any part of Great Britain he is attracting the kind of customer who is prepared to pay for that service.
Not all of Trident's jobs are immediate. Some indeed are booked four hours or indeed 24 hours in advance and a price is quoted at the time of booking. If an urgent job comes along which cannot be delayed, Trident immediately contacts one of the less urgent customers. If this customer is prepared to forgo his booking in favour of the urgent customer then he could enjoy a discount of up to 25 per cent on the quoted price. The 25 per cent is then added to the quotation offered to the new customer as a premium for immediate action and the vehicle is diverted via Air Call to the new job.
The total cost of the radio service to Trident, including the early morning calls, is 2s 6d per vehicle per hour. "This amount is infinitesimal when looked at in relation to the total operating costs," says Mr Fluckiger. Certainly, his £280 per month Air Call account appears to be well below the overhead costs of running a traffic office for a 14-vehicle fleet and he also points out that by minute-to-minute contact he is reducing dead mileage and saving fuel.
Own-account field Not all Air Call's customers are of the "panic delivery" type. In the own-account field after-sales service is recognized as a most important factor. One company recognizing this fact and using Air Call to provide an adequate after-sales service is the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.
Although the 3M company is in a highly specialized field it is not without competitors; to retain its customers in the face of competition it goes all out to ensure that expensive photocopying equipment which breaks down is serviced almost immediately. The company's service engineers have estate ears which are fitted with RT equipment to ensure immediate service.
When a new 3M company machine is installed the customer is given a telephone number through which he can contact a service engineer. The telephone number in fact connects 3M's customer with the local Air Call switchboard operator who calls up the service engineer. This can be done within a matter. of seconds while the customer is still on the landline if an estimated time of arrival is required.
Air Call's operators are able to distinguish the 3M machine model numbers and are therefore able to pass clear instructions to the engineer.
Dealing with such widely diversified businesses, the Air Call switchboard operators have to become conversant, in a very short time, with technical jargon—machine model numbers, medical terms, descriptions of components, tyre sizes, ply ratings and tread patterns—used by their customers. In fact one of Air Call's subscribers in the Luton area is Kenning Tyre Services.
This company estimates that it saves the cost of three mobile fitters and at the same time provides a 24-hour service by using RT. Kenning provides an emergency service for the 900 square miles of territory bounded by Kettering, Aylesbury,. Watford and Baldock and its radio-telephone service costs £112 a week. When this is deducted from the estimated saving there is a net saving of around £6,000 a year.
In many cases Kenning's customers, knowing that they can obtain the emergency service without contacting the tyre depots at Luton, Bedford or Northampton, contact" Air Call direct. Air Call pass the fitting instructions direct to a mobile which attends the emergency within a short time of the call. Where such a service does not exist drivers can spend as long as four hours awaiting attention.
Another emergency service making use of RT is Pillingers of Bristol. I had heard of Mr K. J. Pillinger through a Bristol operator before I knew he was "on the air". This operator took the trouble to write to CM praising the breakdown service. Two
independent checks in Bristol confirmed his opinion.
This breakdown service deals with 80 calls a week and specializes in the recovery of commercial vehicles. Mr Pillinger told me that his business had been built on a service perfected by the use of RT. He is on call 24 hours each day through Air Call and is used extensively by the police and motoring organizations.
Pillinger Motors largely confine their activities to the West of England and South Wales. However, I understand that the firm has carried out suspended tows from all over England and on one occasion from Scotland. Like other operators on multi-channel sets the driver is in constant touch with his base.
I was surprised to learn that plant operators figure largely in the Air Call story, as heavy low-loaders and slow-moving vehicles seem far removed from the panic delivery or emergency type of work I had come to connect with Air Call. It appears, however, that if a low-loader costing £5 an hour can be diverted even once each month while it is trundling home empty and save as little as three hours, then the RT equipment is paid for. If it can be diverted to drop a bulldozer or 10RB dragline the saving is more than worth while.
There are other fringe services which RT on national coverage can supply more easily than, say, a company-operated two-way radio service. Information on traffic delays, diversions, road and weather conditions, and directions in strange towns are all supplied by Air Call. In this last connection I have been "talked in" to premises on three occasions where •the journey involved traversing a complicated one-way system in a strange town. This saved both time and confusion.
The Road Haulage Association's Vehicle Observer Corps use the service to relay details of stolen vehicles to all mobiles. In the London Area, I understand, this amounts to 25 each month.
When an RT set is fitted to a vehicle the details of the vehicle are recorded at the Air Call switchboards. In the event of a breakdown the driver can obtain assistance without leaving his cabin. By referring to CM's 24-Hour and Emergency Service Guide the driver is able to advise the Air Call operator of his trouble and pass the telephone number of the nearest service station for his make of vehicle. The Air Call operator will do the rest.
Looking at the economics of Air Call's alternative services, a multi-channel unit which costs between £15 and £17 a month and gives nationwide coverage is only £2 dearer than a single channel unit which covers a 30-mile radius of base. The telephone answering service, whether direct or referred, costs £6 a month and in addition there is a small charge for a Post Office line.
Two-way radio control is not new but it is no longer the luxury that it once was. It is very much a tool of management. In the experience of those who use it, it reduces overheads, builds a reputation for im mediate service and increases productivity.